I just feel that nForce2 users are overlooked by this review - not to say that this isn't a great one, another excellent job by the staff.

However, I resent the criticism on that AMD users have no need for DDR500. With the new Bartons and nForce2 400/Ultra chipsets, DDR400 and above have become popular in the eyes of system builders.

Given the proper SPP voltage on the nForce2 or nForce2 400/Ultra, most unlocked processors like Thoroughbreds can hit pretty close to the 200MHz barrier, and it's a necessity to utilise DDR400 at that point. Like I mentioned earlier, with Bartons the road to 200FSB has become easier to walk on. Excuse my exaggeration, but it is almost a sin not to run Bartons beyond the 200FSB.

If a futher investigations are looked, a lot of enthusiasts are purchasing, at a minimum, low-latency DDR400, with PC3500/PC3700 being the norm. This also applies to AMD users especially those of us with nForce2.

Given the PCI lock, nForce2 is the overclocker's jewel for AMD setups. A group of us have already breached 233FSB, with occasional news of reaching 250FSB. Some motherboards even offer up to 300MHz of FSB adjustment in 1MHz increments.

I understand that Intel's Canterwood and Springdale are highly popular in the top-end crowd right now; but a study on DDR500 should not be overlooked by the staff of Anandtech, one of the more respected and popular tech sites on the web. Please spare the "what about the commoners" criticism - we are tech-savvy people, and given that we voluntarily choose to read tech sites like Anandtech already introduces a bias into the popular of users reading critical on memory sticks.

Guys the new OCZ PC4000 Universal ram is here.I have the new PC4000 that runs 2-3-3-5 at ddr400 and tops out well over ddr533 with 2.5-4-4-7 timings.At the moment though I still feel OCZ3700 is the fastest at 250fsb with 2-3-3-7 timings at 3Vdimm.

On the bottom of page 3, you state that performance on an Athlon nForce2 Ultra 400 was not tested for the Mushkin PC4000, but one page previous you say that it IS tested on an nForce2 Ultra 400 ... is that because those are what Mushkin tests the memory on itself, or was this a misprint of some sort? The only things you tested this memory on were the Intel-based boards listed at the bottom of page 3, correct?Reply

We have looked at OCZ 4000 Gold, but we did not do another review because performance was virtually identical to the OCZ4000 Copper Engineering Samples we tested in an earlier review. It is outstanding DDR500 memory and produced the highest overclock in our DDR500 roundup. However, it does not perform as fast at DDR400 as the Mushkin PC4000 High Performance tested here, Corsair XMS4000 PRO, or OCZ 3700 GOLD (which is based on lasered Samsung chips and not Hynix). We have asked OCZ about products using the newest Hynix chips, and they say they will likely release a similar product, or maybe something even faster, in the near future.Reply